


A Pale Stranger

by ClockworkRainbow



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21833881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkRainbow/pseuds/ClockworkRainbow
Summary: In an age before Hallownest, a stranger comes to the land that was.Or: A hunter of the moth tribe ventures from his home, and finds the first warning of changing time.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 133





	A Pale Stranger

The first time he saw the stranger, it was hard to say quite how it captured his eye.

The shadow of the mountain was brightly lit, washed gray by the glow, and, yet from its precarious perch, the stranger was unmistakable; nearly beautiful, a spot of white against the drifting snow.

Markoth was not looking for strangers; but he was looking for something out of place, and the stranger was that. It did not move as he approached.

It stood smaller than him, draped in a heavy, ragged cloak whose hemline looked as if the stranger had dragged it some long distance, odd old stains marking its edges. Its head was bowed forward, under the weight of a circular ring of horns; they rose in immaculate wicked points, all to about the same height. One hand, slight and pale, held the edge of the cloak sturdy against the wind. Black eyes bored down the edge of the cliff.

“These lands are not yours to wander carelessly, traveler.” An attempt, at least, at civility; his nails stayed under his wings, folded against his body.

The stranger lifted its head to stare at him. Those eyes did not blink at all.

He wonders if it has understood him at all. The cloak would hardly suggest a mindless creature, but perhaps the tongue is foreign to it. “Persons less forgiving than I are known to patrol them. If you hoped for respite from the wastes, it is better taken elsewhere.”

The eyes turned back towards the bottom. “I do not.” Mustering itself slightly, “wander. I do not wander. I am only here.”

There was something oddly lilting about its words; the cadence stumbled, as though it toyed with the sounds as it spoke them. It struck him, at that moment, that perhaps, whatever this was, it was a child of its kind; a motivation to gentle his temper however slightly, and attempt to gather meaning from what was nearly nonsense. “A pilgrim of sort, are you?”

“Pilgrim.” It tested the word cautiously. He was not sure of its mouthparts; they did not seem immediately visible. The sheen of its shell was like glass, or polished metal; it threw back the light of the area sharply into his eyes. “Yes. That is what I am now.”

“Seeking holiness, then. Ours is a brighter light than many. She does not welcome many outsiders, but you are hardly alike the many creatures below.” He unfurled his wings, spread them as he stepped off the ledge to search elsewhere. Unspoken, but lingering on his mind: _Perhaps holiness would do you good._

“Am I?” he heard it say, before the rush of the wind carried away anything else it might have said.

It sounded nearly upset.

-

He searched the bottom of the canyon first. The pools of acid, stinging with the moss-liege’s rebuke, he gave a berth, but eyed with suspicion. His quarry was a young moth, her wings yet soft and unproven. And wayfarers more seasoned than she had stumbled these heights, fallen from the air to dash on the stones or burn in the acid.

Despite his thoughts, he found little. A hopper accosted him; he split it in a single strike, but found no blood of moth in its belly. Concern mounting, he raised voice for prayer and acknowledgement only briefly before he continued.

He should not be remiss in his duties. A moth that soiled their hands with the taking of life was a single necessary step removed from a heretic. He had left with holy blessing shining down upon his head, certainly, but only She could weigh a life.

Regardless, it was hard to think of the dream-light of a mere hopper when soul of greater value might have been spilt.

The youngling was named Fairwing. She was prone to fancy, and careless. Little had been thought when she set out to venture the lands below the mountain. Little had been thought when she had dawdled, perhaps fetched up in a cavern to warm herself before returning, simply lost track of time, simply forgot that others were worrying about her. Such was Fairwing, careless as the winds that carried her.

And yet, they had sought Markoth’s repose, at edge of the nest. They had not called for a wanderer, nor a doctor; they had called for a hunter.

Such affairs stirred him from his meditation rarely, but their scarcity left them all the more ill at ease.

He wandered the sorts of places he had been told Fairwing loved. Stalks of shimmering ferns, riverbeds of sleek black stones polished bright by the acid water. Things that would charm a fanciful mind. Caverns that would form useful respite. The black gate, blemish left on the land by high god’s foe. He slowed in its shadow.

Would she dare such a thing? A sweet-tempered child that meant no harm? A kindly creature, who tended others? Would simple curiosity drive her to test the boundaries of heresy, or did her unassuming mien belie a willingness much like his own, to prowl the twilight boundary for the benefit of village and god?

…He was getting ahead of himself. The sun was setting, and chill descended; he would have to rest for the night, and resume his search in the morning with fresh eyes.

Fairwing, wherever she had gone, would have to find her own way to not feel the cold. Her own choices had led her there, he told himself, gathering material for a fire.

_And if not?_ A thread at the back of his mind teased.

If not, then there was hardly anything his arts could do for her.

\- -

He awakened well before dawn and his first realization was that something was in the cavern with him. He wasted no time casting for his nail, merely ignited the runes and sent it hurtling toward the shadow, springing to his own feet and seizing the second to bring it pressing into the attacker’s chitin, while by his own weight holding it down to appraise it safely.

Familiar black eyes stared unblinkingly upward. With its shabby cloth flung from its shoulders, he beheld a segmented body like a hairless caterpillar. The underbelly beneath his foot was clear as a hopper’s stomach; he could see the desperate pounding of a pale heart, fluttering in that darkness.

As it lay docile immediately in his grasp, Markoth was convinced it had meant him no harm, and thus withdrew, allowing it to scramble up onto its many short limbs and pull the cloak back around itself. “Unwise to approach a hunter in their sleep, pilgrim.”

His blindly flung nail had scored its hide, opening a nick in its shoulder. It prodded the wound, investigating around it, and then stuck its fingers into the opening without evidence of pain. They came away with a silvery ichor, even more painfully bright than the exterior of the creature, that drifted away from its fingers in small motes of white.

It sighed, a single, tinny sort of note, and curled its hand once its fingers were clean. He had never known a stricken beast to behave in such a way. “Still feeling?”

“Are you, or am I?” Maybe this creature was simply very poor at communicating altogether.

“I am.” It swatted the cut as if attempting to disperse dust. “I chose not to. It was to be better. But I am the same.”

“None but a god can command misery in such a way. We mortal creatures must simply live with it.”

He was not prepared for the raptness of the attention with which it focused on him. “A god can? What is a god?” It pressed, speaking faster in its stumbling words. “How does one know when it finds a god? Does it bleed? Can it be captured?”

“One knows,” Markoth retorted, if only such as to stem the tide of questions before they turned even more perturbing, “by the light it gives off. And if one is wise, they pay it respectful distance.”

He scattered the remnants of his campfire onto the stones, so the wind could not reawaken any solitary embers.

“I give off light,” the stranger added after a thoughtful moment, seeming nearly annoyed with him. And it did- an eerie, pallid flicker in the gloom, one that faded as it followed him to the entrance.

“Not as She does. Before Her, you would be nothing but a faint glimmer.” Markoth pointed, far above them, up the cliffs. “Even now, She shines down upon us. All that Her light touches, the deep shadows are driven away. We become whole in Her image.”

The stranger’s body slid over the stones. “What is this, that she gives you?”

“For a pilgrim, you seem to know very little of gods. Has no one told you this?”

Indifferently, “they have not spoken to me before.”

Something faintly cold knotted itself in Markoth’s entrails. He negotiated it, as he negotiated his position atop a ledge. He glanced back, only to watch the stranger spring after him, oddly swift-footed, hunkering lengthwise on its body as if it were a crawler, rather than something nearly like a moth.

“What are you, stranger?”

The black eyes met his, ready and without guile. “A pilgrim. You said.”

Were it any other beast, he would suspect it of deliberately evading his question. He frowned, drew breath- to argue or explain, he wasn’t entirely certain- but a thundering rumble split air. The approaching heavy _thumps_ of an elder hopper, its mature bulk dwarfing either of them. Scenting prey, it barreled forwards, black eyes boring into them.

Markoth’s wings snapped open, his hands to his nails, shield shimmering into the air as he feinted free of it. A trail of white at the edges of his vision- the stranger was simply _standing_ there, had hunkered forwards staring directly at the beast. A single bound and the hopper would be upon it. He voiced a momentary blasphemy, hurtled his shield towards the great beast- if he could knock it aside-

The hopper came down in a fine mist of gore, bleeding from places Markoth’s shield had never touched it. Naught but refuse, it spilled in front of the creature in a heap. After a moment, the stranger crouched, picking at its pieces.

The shield returned, and settled into placid orbit. Markoth did not holster it once more, nor sheath his nails, as he approached in silence.

As if it had anything to fear from him, the stranger shied slightly as the distance closed.

The smell of the blood struck him as he drew breath, spoke the words over its body that seemed fitting. On closer examination, the cuts that had separated it were so fine that he could not have replicated them had he sharpened his nails for days.

He supposed the creature had not felt a second of pain as it perished.

“What are you doing?”

Once again, its gaze towards him was earnest. As if it had, itself, done nothing, even though some of the creature’s remains had splattered onto the blank mask of its features.

“A life has been taken. The abyss visits here. Rites must be undertaken, that it does not take root.”

“Abyss?”

“You know nothing of death, and dispense it carelessly.” Markoth did not bother to gentle his tone.

For the first time, it did blink, clear lids flitting across its eyes. “It attacked.”

“And do you only kill when you are attacked?”

It shifted under his gaze.

He tightened his grip on his weapons. “Answer me, stranger.”

“To understand. To find it. I had to.”

He thought that he understood well, this creature’s words.

Such an odd thing. Such a perfect pale, a lilting voice, a strange, nearly harmless sort of manner. Superficially fragile, as if it needed help; so convincing he himself had considered leading it back to the village, before his god.

He had looked for Fairwing by rocks and ferns. But what were they, compared to a beguiling creature none had seen before?

Why look for a body, if there was no body left behind to be found?

“Answer me, then, what you understand of _moths_ , beast.”

For a single, grimly satisfying moment, he thought that he saw fear in the creature’s eyes. Then, they were clouded by something else- hunger, perhaps, but a hunger unlike an animal’s.

The creature moved fast. His nails whistled into empty air; gleaming fragments of silvery light scattered across his shield, and he felt it shudder under the impact. It flared bright, slender wings, unlike a moth’s, flitted back, crouched, recoiled, and pounced; the pale face tilted, betraying wicked mouthparts where its jaw ought to have been. He backpedaled narrowly- its blades snapped closed in the air where his head had been. But his nails had come back to him- he lunged, thrust with both blades- did not strike the creature’s heart, but drew close.

It was an opportunity he paid for. It tackled him; the shield came around just in time, held the beast from him, but he was pinned beneath it, and through the tinny cry of the shield, he could feel it pick at his defenses, methodically, but raptly.

He rested a hand on the talisman at his side; it was no nail that could wound a beast, but with his metal ones scattered awry-

Fire flowered down the blade. The shield fell, and he thrust upwards with it.

The dream nail scored the hide of something- a coiled length of a beast, rearing its nearly featureless head high above him- black eyes set in pale flesh, the only similarity to the creature that held him down- gaping wide, startled, confused.

Golden light tore through the vision.

The creature’s body tumbled free. Limply, it rolled to an edge, and slid off it, a fading pale star disappearing down into the frost.

The sun in Her highest splendor stood before Markoth. Her gaze, set against the only spot of darkness anywhere on Her features, was turned to regard where the body had fallen.

Markoth stumbled onto shaking legs, forced them to kneel. “I have failed you.”

**THE ABYSS TAKE IT. THE FOOLISHNESS OF THE LESSER CASTE WILL EXTEND NOT TO MY LAND.**

She turned, beheld him with a shining eye.

**RETURN, MARKOTH. THE WYRM WILL TRIFLE NOT WITH MY PEOPLE ANY LONGER.**

Her will would not be questioned. He bowed his head once more, and began to make a long, shaky path back to the village.

Nothing could survive the god’s wrath in all Her power, he told himself. Not even a Wyrm, forged in some bewildering shape.

And yet, when he looked down, he saw Her, lingering on the same ledge, watching something far below intently.


End file.
